Mike Price: Right decision to retire

Obviously it's was time for the University of Texas at El Paso to sport a new head football coach. A 3-8 record so far this year, and a string of losing seasons, virtually mandated that.

On Monday, nine-year Coach Mike Price did the gentlemanly thing and announced his retirement.

He did so amid his seventh consecutive losing season in El Paso -- he did it as the second-winningest football coach in UTEP history (48-60).

That's an average of five wins a season.

Price was the latest in a line of UTEP head football coaches to be brought down by the dreaded sports domino effect that is: losing seasons ... dwindling attendance -- and that means the university not accruing the needed ticket revenues to keep the Athletic Department funded.

When UTEP has more competitive teams, attendance figures hover in the 40,000 range. Attendance is also high early each season when there is optimism in the air.

By midway into losing seasons, attendance is generally half that.

This year there was a first-game omen. Perennial national power University of Oklahoma came to the Sun Bowl, yet UTEP did not sell out Sun Bowl Stadium. A few years earlier, when Texas was the first home opponent, tickets went quickly.

On that note, Price is by far the most popular UTEP football coach of the modern era.

No UTEP coach, other than the late Basketball Hall of Famer Don Haskins has been a better ambassador for El Paso. Spirited. Good natured. Ever positive. That's Price.

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Price coached 31 seasons.

He was National Coach of the Year while at Washington State in 1997.

His career 177 wins was among the top 10 of active coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision -- the NCAA's top classification.

And what makes losing Price a predicament of a sort is he has one of the university's best won-lost records -- and he took his team to a bowl game three times while averaging five wins a season in El Paso.

Before Price, UTEP had participated in only two bowl games (1988 and 2000) in more than half a century.

We do know that Athletic Director Bob Stull once said persons in his position normally have a top-five wanted list, at all times, as possible replacements for their head football and basketball coaches.

The rumor mill now begins

But one thing seems certain, and obvious. UTEP needed a coaching change in order to rekindle the ticket-buying spirit.

And Mike Price was gentleman enough not to stand in the university's way.